Some Strange Movements and Programs

Barometer Individuals

Perfect Mitchell individual movements for non-prime numbers of tables
don't always exist. Several years ago, I ran individual games
with 10-14 tables or so and found some decent, if not perfect,
movements for these games. They are all barometer games (it's
really a nightmare otherwise) and are all curtailed movements,
but in the sense of avoiding playing with/against the same players
too often, they are optimal. (I think. It's been awhile.)

Anyway, I figure I might as well post the movements. I'm
supplying two different forms of the movement. One is a compact
description that consists of five columns, the four players and
the boards. The players are divided into sections (these are all
Mitchell games) so there'll be a player 1 in each column. The
numbers represent which table player 1 will visit each round. The first
row is the first round, the second the second, and so on. I also
have master sheets for some of these movements, but they are just
about as hard to read.

One minor criterion was that to select among equal movements,
the movement pattern ought to be as regular as possible. I
used a computer program to check everything but this, so there
might be better movements. These are all expected to be guide
card movements, by the way. I have guide cards for them if
anyone cares.

Note that for 11 and 13 tables, perfect movements do exist
and are nice and symmetrical.

Master Sheets

Programs

Scorer reads move tables and scores various types of games,
including rotating individuals. (Did you wonder why all
these games had 3-board rounds?) It's rather hopeless in
terms of user interface. To use it, one needs to type into
a file a matrix of tables and boards with the scores in the
right row/column. I suspect no one will want to use this
if they have ACBLScore unless they happen to have a real
need to run one of these perverse movements. Even then, it'd
probably be easier to convince the ACBL to modify ACBLScore
than to use this, but, hey, this is free.

All in all, I don't expect anyone ever to use this stuff
(OK, I might someday, but I know the programmer). It's
mostly here just in case someone is amused or wants to
write a scoring program and wants to see some errors that
someone else made in his first couple of attempts. And
free is free. Caveat: I shall not fix the code if
you find errors. I might be willing to accept updated
code if you fix errors.Jeff Goldsmith,
jeff@tintin.jpl.nasa.gov,
Sept. 11, 1996